So, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I like or dislike the warforged, and if there was a place for it in my game. My current opinion is that I like it, but not it’s origin or type. The idea that they are by all appearances a humanoid robot/construct clashes (IMO) with them being a living humanoid. In my own game they would be creatures of iron, stone, and maybe oil. Obviously this then complicates things: how do you heal them? I’m curious if anyone else has had this conundrum and how they were able to mechanically resolve it. The best I could come up with was giving them limited healing via combat (charges of healing granting 1d4+(ability modifier), cast on self as a bonus action, and bonus hit dice when short resting. Other ideas are also welcome. Basically, hit me with what ya got. :)
I’m sorry but it appears you skipped over the OP. As I stated, I am unable to justify Warforged as a “living humanoid,” for reasons I listed above and can go into greater detail as may be necessary. It just doesn’t add up. So there is nothing that “ain’t broke,” but something that does need a fix.
If you’re a dead set on having Warforged count as constructs and not humanoids and want options for healing besides expanding hit-dice during a short rest you could allow Mending to heal them like an Artificer Battle-Smiths construct companion, proficiency in Smith’s tools lets them expand hit-dice as an action, a racial feat that allows basic healing spells to work on them, homebrew a magic item, or homebrew spells.
Okay, thank you Optimistic14, that was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I like and support the idea of repair kits, ala Medicinal Kits. Mend is indeed a good idea for some baseline repairing (probably just a straight 1d4 (it’s a cantrip after all). I’m still mulling my “extra HD on short rest” but overall I feel it’s worth sticking with for sheer hardiness.
... In my own game they would be creatures of iron, stone, and maybe oil. Obviously this then complicates things: how do you heal them? I’m curious if anyone else has had this conundrum and how they were able to mechanically resolve it. The best I could come up with was giving them limited healing via combat (charges of healing granting 1d4+(ability modifier), cast on self as a bonus action, and bonus hit dice when short resting. Other ideas are also welcome. Basically, hit me with what ya got. :)
So that would basically give them a free, fighter-style, second wind which, while workable, gives the character something for arguably nothing. I like it though.
The warforged would certainly lose out in groups that could give in combat healing through spells like healing word and by the feeding of potions, but not every party does that.
If a warforged doesn't have a soul then perhaps it can be decided whether it would face death saves. Maybe something like fluid continues to leak out. Maybe something happens like a terminator style rerouting of power so as to bring a warforged, that hasn't been dismantled, back on-line.
You could certainly produce a parallel mechanic to healing potions as "repair patches" or some such.
The mending cantrip takes 1 minute to cast but with no expense and this, again, would give something for nothing. Perhaps, the healing give a hit dice of healing (d8 for a rogue/d12 for a barbarian) but, per the recipient's long rest, once at their first level and twice at their third or fourth level something like that... It might also work to homebrew mending so that it could be upcast so as to parallel the effects of the cure wounds spell.
In the world that allows chunks of iron to ‘live’….healing spells in that same world ‘mend’ those creatures vs a more standard healing effect on regular humanoids. Fundamentally the same thing-it’s reassembling/rejoining minerals vs carbon and water.
when you zoom way in , both scenarios are just rearranging atoms
1. If you do not have any players who want to play as a Warforged, then just use any number of other constructs as NPCs instead (or homebrew your own thing). You can then treat them as you would other construct races - immune to traditional healing magic (though something like Mending would work). No sense going out of your way to jump through hoops to change something when you, as the DM, can just as easily do a different thing.
2. If you do have a player, they should be able to use traditional healing - otherwise you are both harming their ability to have fun and any healer in your party’s ability to play their support class in a way which interfaces with every party member.
The easy solution is to think of healing magic slightly differently than you do. It is not just about patching up bodies, but also one’s animating principle; their soul, staving off death for a little longer. This gives you something rather fun to work with - by making healing magic work on Warforged, there is a degree of proof that they have an animating principle; that they have somehow evolved beyond their initial programming and become something more. That then creates a whole set of moral issues you can bring into the campaign. If something born of artifice can develop an animating principle akin to a soul, what does that mean for the once-thought-unique souls? What does it mean for artifice if artifice is able to create new life, once thought only the domain of gods? How do we treat something that we once considered property, now that we can prove it has something akin to a soul—are they now equals or are their souls somehow lesser? At what point did they develop these artificial souls, and what does that mean for our past treatment of them? How did it even happen in the first place?
All of that can work in some classic science fiction stories about the development of self aware creations of artifice, framed in a fantasy manner by adding magic as a key component to the proof of their existence.
I mean, I don’t see why you need to justify healing spells working on a half humanoid construct, when it’s a game where healing spells even exist, dragons run rampant, and people can build magic items to teleport or just blow up stuff.
So I don’t think you need to come up with a mechanical solution but rather just an in game one, all healing magic does is stitching up your skin and wounds so you can keep fighting, so with robots all that is just fixing broken gears, restoring magical energy, fixing their armour plating.
Several years back I played a game based loosely on 3.5 d&d edition. Healing spells were only 50% effective on warforged, but there was a line of arcane spells called ‘repair’, which were basically mending but upgraded. I think there was a ‘reconstruct’ which was basically the heal spell. They did the same for constructs and warforged that cure wounds did for regular folk.
Several years back I played a game based loosely on 3.5 d&d edition. Healing spells were only 50% effective on warforged, but there was a line of arcane spells called ‘repair’, which were basically mending but upgraded. I think there was a ‘reconstruct’ which was basically the heal spell. They did the same for constructs and warforged that cure wounds did for regular folk.
That was the canon 3.5 rules for Warforged- standard healing spells only healed half HP, but Repair Damage spells existed on the Wizard and Artificer spell lists to provide full healing.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Hit Points: Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck. Creatures with more hit points are more difficult to kill. Those with fewer hit points are more fragile.
Several years back I played a game based loosely on 3.5 d&d edition. Healing spells were only 50% effective on warforged, but there was a line of arcane spells called ‘repair’, which were basically mending but upgraded. I think there was a ‘reconstruct’ which was basically the heal spell. They did the same for constructs and warforged that cure wounds did for regular folk.
That was the canon 3.5 rules for Warforged- standard healing spells only healed half HP, but Repair Damage spells existed on the Wizard and Artificer spell lists to provide full healing.
And the Warforged or another character could use [an amount of time that basically fits into a rest] to use a special tool kit to restore a number of HP equal to the result of their skill check.
I played one for a while. I don't recommend using the old healing rules for Warforged.
Edit: Okay, so, in 5e you pop back to full HP after a long rest. In 3.5, instead you regain HP equal to your level. There were no short rests during which to spend hit dice, either. Also, any healing spells that a caster used too close to bedtime, they didn't get back the next morning, so the strategy of converting all your leftovers into spontaneous Cure spells at the end of the day wasn't an option. (On that note, however -- my DM has never enforced this rule, and healing STILL takes forever. Lately he's been structuring his adventures as mini arcs that last one or two in-game days before a downtime period of "long enough that you're all back to full.")
This is the rate that Warforged healing was designed to match. It's way slower than anything in 5e. Don't use it unmodified.
Several years back I played a game based loosely on 3.5 d&d edition. Healing spells were only 50% effective on warforged, but there was a line of arcane spells called ‘repair’, which were basically mending but upgraded. I think there was a ‘reconstruct’ which was basically the heal spell. They did the same for constructs and warforged that cure wounds did for regular folk.
That was the canon 3.5 rules for Warforged- standard healing spells only healed half HP, but Repair Damage spells existed on the Wizard and Artificer spell lists to provide full healing.
Edit: Okay, so, in 5e you pop back to full HP after a long rest. In 3.5, instead you regain HP equal to your level. There were no short rests during which to spend hit dice, either. Also, any healing spells that a caster used too close to bedtime, they didn't get back the next morning, so the strategy of converting all your leftovers into spontaneous Cure spells at the end of the day wasn't an option. (On that note, however -- my DM has never enforced this rule, and healing STILL takes forever. Lately he's been structuring his adventures as mini arcs that last one or two in-game days before a downtime period of "long enough that you're all back to full.")
Yeah, none of the GMs I ever played with in 3rd Edition enforced that rule regarding spell restoration because it was a pain and a half trying to heal back to full HP in the first place. Anything that slowed it down further was just ignored.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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So, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I like or dislike the warforged, and if there was a place for it in my game. My current opinion is that I like it, but not it’s origin or type. The idea that they are by all appearances a humanoid robot/construct clashes (IMO) with them being a living humanoid. In my own game they would be creatures of iron, stone, and maybe oil. Obviously this then complicates things: how do you heal them? I’m curious if anyone else has had this conundrum and how they were able to mechanically resolve it. The best I could come up with was giving them limited healing via combat (charges of healing granting 1d4+(ability modifier), cast on self as a bonus action, and bonus hit dice when short resting. Other ideas are also welcome. Basically, hit me with what ya got. :)
Healing spells work on Warforged. They are classified as humanoids not constructs. Not point of trying to fix something that’s not broken.
I’m sorry but it appears you skipped over the OP. As I stated, I am unable to justify Warforged as a “living humanoid,” for reasons I listed above and can go into greater detail as may be necessary. It just doesn’t add up. So there is nothing that “ain’t broke,” but something that does need a fix.
If you’re a dead set on having Warforged count as constructs and not humanoids and want options for healing besides expanding hit-dice during a short rest you could allow Mending to heal them like an Artificer Battle-Smiths construct companion, proficiency in Smith’s tools lets them expand hit-dice as an action, a racial feat that allows basic healing spells to work on them, homebrew a magic item, or homebrew spells.
Okay, thank you Optimistic14, that was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I like and support the idea of repair kits, ala Medicinal Kits. Mend is indeed a good idea for some baseline repairing (probably just a straight 1d4 (it’s a cantrip after all). I’m still mulling my “extra HD on short rest” but overall I feel it’s worth sticking with for sheer hardiness.
I don't know, what if you just say, healing is magic, it speeds up the nanobots self healing, just like et would "repair" itself during a rest.
So that would basically give them a free, fighter-style, second wind which, while workable, gives the character something for arguably nothing. I like it though.
The warforged would certainly lose out in groups that could give in combat healing through spells like healing word and by the feeding of potions, but not every party does that.
If a warforged doesn't have a soul then perhaps it can be decided whether it would face death saves. Maybe something like fluid continues to leak out. Maybe something happens like a terminator style rerouting of power so as to bring a warforged, that hasn't been dismantled, back on-line.
You could certainly produce a parallel mechanic to healing potions as "repair patches" or some such.
The mending cantrip takes 1 minute to cast but with no expense and this, again, would give something for nothing. Perhaps, the healing give a hit dice of healing (d8 for a rogue/d12 for a barbarian) but, per the recipient's long rest, once at their first level and twice at their third or fourth level something like that... It might also work to homebrew mending so that it could be upcast so as to parallel the effects of the cure wounds spell.
You could just allow healing magic to charge it's energy core speeding up/triggering whatever auto repair you are using to justify hit dice
You could say healing spells on Warforged recharge their life essence, or repair their physical damages.
In the world that allows chunks of iron to ‘live’….healing spells in that same world ‘mend’ those creatures vs a more standard healing effect on regular humanoids. Fundamentally the same thing-it’s reassembling/rejoining minerals vs carbon and water.
when you zoom way in , both scenarios are just rearranging atoms
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Two easy solutions:
1. If you do not have any players who want to play as a Warforged, then just use any number of other constructs as NPCs instead (or homebrew your own thing). You can then treat them as you would other construct races - immune to traditional healing magic (though something like Mending would work). No sense going out of your way to jump through hoops to change something when you, as the DM, can just as easily do a different thing.
2. If you do have a player, they should be able to use traditional healing - otherwise you are both harming their ability to have fun and any healer in your party’s ability to play their support class in a way which interfaces with every party member.
The easy solution is to think of healing magic slightly differently than you do. It is not just about patching up bodies, but also one’s animating principle; their soul, staving off death for a little longer. This gives you something rather fun to work with - by making healing magic work on Warforged, there is a degree of proof that they have an animating principle; that they have somehow evolved beyond their initial programming and become something more. That then creates a whole set of moral issues you can bring into the campaign. If something born of artifice can develop an animating principle akin to a soul, what does that mean for the once-thought-unique souls? What does it mean for artifice if artifice is able to create new life, once thought only the domain of gods? How do we treat something that we once considered property, now that we can prove it has something akin to a soul—are they now equals or are their souls somehow lesser? At what point did they develop these artificial souls, and what does that mean for our past treatment of them? How did it even happen in the first place?
All of that can work in some classic science fiction stories about the development of self aware creations of artifice, framed in a fantasy manner by adding magic as a key component to the proof of their existence.
Healing magic manipulates the current state of a body to match its metaphysical state-to-be. Boom, healing magic works on sentient Warforged.
I mean, I don’t see why you need to justify healing spells working on a half humanoid construct, when it’s a game where healing spells even exist, dragons run rampant, and people can build magic items to teleport or just blow up stuff.
So I don’t think you need to come up with a mechanical solution but rather just an in game one, all healing magic does is stitching up your skin and wounds so you can keep fighting, so with robots all that is just fixing broken gears, restoring magical energy, fixing their armour plating.
Problem Solved?
Several years back I played a game based loosely on 3.5 d&d edition. Healing spells were only 50% effective on warforged, but there was a line of arcane spells called ‘repair’, which were basically mending but upgraded. I think there was a ‘reconstruct’ which was basically the heal spell. They did the same for constructs and warforged that cure wounds did for regular folk.
That was the canon 3.5 rules for Warforged- standard healing spells only healed half HP, but Repair Damage spells existed on the Wizard and Artificer spell lists to provide full healing.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Interesting. It was a long time ago, and I thought we had made that up. Memory is a funny thing.
Hit points aren't meat points.
Rule-wise hit points are indeed more than that;
And the Warforged or another character could use [an amount of time that basically fits into a rest] to use a special tool kit to restore a number of HP equal to the result of their skill check.
I played one for a while. I don't recommend using the old healing rules for Warforged.
Edit: Okay, so, in 5e you pop back to full HP after a long rest. In 3.5, instead you regain HP equal to your level. There were no short rests during which to spend hit dice, either. Also, any healing spells that a caster used too close to bedtime, they didn't get back the next morning, so the strategy of converting all your leftovers into spontaneous Cure spells at the end of the day wasn't an option. (On that note, however -- my DM has never enforced this rule, and healing STILL takes forever. Lately he's been structuring his adventures as mini arcs that last one or two in-game days before a downtime period of "long enough that you're all back to full.")
This is the rate that Warforged healing was designed to match. It's way slower than anything in 5e. Don't use it unmodified.
Yeah, none of the GMs I ever played with in 3rd Edition enforced that rule regarding spell restoration because it was a pain and a half trying to heal back to full HP in the first place. Anything that slowed it down further was just ignored.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.